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Merchants effectively succeeded in lobbying to postpone a trial closure of lower Forest Avenue, though the City Council did vote Tuesday to temporarily transform six parking spaces on Forest and Ocean Avenues into outdoor dining areas for 60 days beginning in mid-September. Whole...

Anyone hoping to earn some extra cash by renting out space in their home this summer to short term visitors will have to make other plans if they want to go about it legally. The City Council Tuesday voted 4-1, with Mayor Pro Tem Steve Dicterow dissenting, to extend for 90 days a...

Tide-pool educator Letty Skeen was surprised to see a blanket of hundreds of bright red crabs, mostly dead, lining the shore when she arrived at Treasure Island in South Laguna on Monday, June 15. At the tide pools, she found about 20 still alive, fortunately sequestered...

One of Laguna Beach’s most original creative forces, artist Cheryl Ekstrom, died Saturday, June 13, at UC Irvine Medical Center due to complications from cancer treatment begun just months earlier. She was 71. From under a wavy burgundy bob and a tiny frame, Ekstrom for more than...

Despite an earlier decision to uproot them, the school board unanimously voted to leave intact 28 newly planted eucalyptus trees on a slope surrounding the high school athletic field Tuesday. Due to growing controversy surrounding the young saplings, the board’s move...

Jae “Randy” Song paid $685,000 for a bucolic 12-acre lot in Canyon Acres at a bank auction in 2010. Assurances from the previous owner and various city officials that he would have “no problem” rebuilding on the footprints of the original home and...

With a 4 percent across-the-board employee pay raise scheduled, the Laguna Beach Unified School District board approved a $52.9 million budget for the coming fiscal year, which includes a 7 percent jump in revenue, according to a preliminary report. Budget growth is due to a 6.6...

By Torie Hamilton, Special to the Independent “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and—the pursuit of happiness,” booms narrator Richard...

The parents of a Laguna Beach police officer who died on duty two years ago in a traffic collision this week asked the Orange County Superior Court to dismiss the wrongful death lawsuit they filed against the driver of the other vehicle and two other defendants. Luciana and...

To signal its intolerance for skipped meetings by members of city boards, the City Council amended its attendance policy and established that four absences in a year would place the appointment in jeopardy. The Council will then review the circumstances of the absences and decide...

Many downtown merchants left their shops this week to protest at City Hall, expressing their dismay with the proposed 13-day trial closure of a section of Forest Avenue to vehicular traffic in August. Creating a pedestrian mall on Forest between Coast Highway and Glenneyre Street...

Four days before tonight’s scholarship awards convocation at Laguna Beach High School, Lynn Gregory was in crunch-time, “buried” under phone calls, getting out last-minute invitations and sending “no” letters to rejected applicants. Of 222 graduating seniors, 114 are receiving...

Residents and businesses that routinely toss the wrong kind of garbage into their green waste and recycle bins may now be fined for their negligence, one of several trash disposal changes the City Council considered last week. Waste Management, the city’s garbage collector,...

Summer trolleys will roll along the same coastal route as the off-season weekend trolleys that began in March, running north to south along Coast Highway without detouring for a connection at the downtown bus depot. In recent years, summer trolleys followed loops originating from...

After 25 years of building an acclaimed student drama program at Laguna Beach Unified School District, Mark Dressler is expected to experience another outstanding showing. More than 150 former students, parents, friends and theatrical associates are planning to attend Dressler’s...